Where the Bands Are: This Week in Live Music and Concert News

At last - The Flaming Lips! Plus, Pappy Martin Legacy Masten Jazz Fest, Type Relevant, Talking Dead Heads, Gantzer/Spafford, and much more...

Jul 18, 2024

Hey there, music freaks!

It’s nice to be back, after a wonderful family vacation with our son Declan and his partner, Hannah. We had a music-filled, action-packed and far too short time together, and a lot of you were a part of that time - thanks to everyone who came out to the Classic Vinyl Live @ the Sportsmen’s Tavern show celebrating Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ Damn the Torpedoes, and the Music Matters @ the Harbor Walk Buffalo Dead ’79 gig, which also happened to be a joint birthday celebration for myself and Declan. Beautiful memories made!

This coming week offers a delightful cross-section of life’s rich (musical) pageant, including one show that is the crux of my own 2024 summer concert season - the Flaming Lips Monday, July 22 appearance at Artpark. To say I’ve been looking forward to this show is an understatement - we (my extended family of Lips lovers) went so far as to rent a school bus to take us to and from the show, and if Neal Cassady was still alive, we most likely would’ve looked into booking him as our bus driver. Failing that, we remain undeterred in our quest to fully embrace the otherworldly magic that is a Flaming Lips show - especially one that is aimed at celebrating the anniversary of the wondrous stories that comprise the Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots album. The Lips will perform that album in full for the evening’s first set, and then return for another set of surprises. Hope to see you all there. I’ll be the guy with the mile-wide grin plastered across his face…

In other news, the fine folks behind the annual Pappy Martin Legacy Masten Jazz Festival have announced the lineup for this year’s 29th annual Fest, which takes place on consecutive Sundays (July 21 and July 28) on the grand side lawn at the Buffalo Museum of Science. The free festival is headlined this year by the more-than-legendary saxophonist Kenny Garrett and his Sounds from the Ancestors band. The full lineup also includes performances by Karen Saxon & the Difference, the Love Supreme School of Music, Given Gelin Quintet, Louis Hayes, the All-Starr Band, Drea D’Nur, Shenel Johns, and Curtis Lundy & Umoja. This one is not to be missed.

I’d like to offer a shout-out to one of the prime movers in our regional jazz/hip-hop/funk/soul hybrid movement, the enduring Type Relevant. The band continues it’s Tuesday residency at Allen Street Hardware, this and every week, from 9:30 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. I chatted with drummer John Hunter (my rhythm section partner in hard funk outfit Tiger Chung Lee) for an update on Type Relevant’s doings, and he was quick to praise the talents of singer Lynntressa Atkinson, who he calls “probably the most naturally gifted singer I've heard around here,” and hails for her “stunning Motown vibes - picture Aretha Franklin, Lauryn Hill and Whitney Houston, all in one.”

In addition to Atkinson and Hunter, the band also finds room for the talents of guitarist Brian Herlihy, and a rotating cast of bassists that includes Nick Gonzalez, Walter Galey, Colin Byrdalski, Andy Palladino, and more. These Tuesday throw-downs feature funk-jazz-hip-hop improvisations, as well as songs from the likes of Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Black Pumas, the Roots, Erykah Badu, Bone Thugs n Harmony, the Fugees and the Isley Brothers. Stop down. Allentown needs our good vibes these days!

Another shout-out is in order here, this time to Mike Gantzer, who has ramped his activity during Aqueous’ hiatus, and is currently on the road with Spafford, killing it at festivals and concert clubs. Check out this show from the Dillon Amphitheater in Colorado for proof. Props to Mike for continually representing the Buffalo community with such ferocity and passion!

Friend to Buffalo music-lovers and all around great human Jason Staniszewski is back in town this week - he relocated to Charleston, South Carolina a few years back - and has packed his visit with Talking Dead Heads gigs, including the one I caught before a packed house at Larkin Square on Wednesday the 17th, and a long-ago sold-out appearance on the USS Little Rock on Thursday the 18th. (Tonight, as I’m writing this.) The band plays the Sportsmen’s Tavern at 9 p.m. on Friday, July 19, and some tickets remain for that show, so grab ‘em quick! It was a pleasure to enjoy Wednesday’s Larkin Square show with so many warm and enthusiastic friends and neighbors, and to head across the street to Hydraulic Hearth afterwards to catch a killer set by Slip Madigan. One of those magical musical summer evenings in Buffalo…

Talking Dead Heads at Larkin Square, 7/17/2024. Photo by Kim Miers.

Slip Madigan at Hydraulic Hearth, 7/17/2024. Photo by Jeff Miers.

Finally, congratulations are in order for the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame Class of 2024 inductees - Rishon Odel, Phil Aguglia, Anthony Casuccio, Hank D'Amico, The Krew Brothers Band, Donna Rose, Tom Russo, Christopher Swist, Jim Yeomans, and Joe Zappo. Well deserved, one and all.

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